Alone
by DarkKnight1
Summary: Buffy contemplates her life and that of her friends. WARNING: This fic cotains Buffy, Spike and B/S bashing. If that isn't your cup of tea the STAY THE HECK AWAY. Otherwise enjoy!


This isn't my best work, by far, but its just something that I couldn't get out of my mind.  
  
Forgive me.  
  
Title: Alone  
  
Author: Socrates  
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the basic story idea. Joss and ME own all.  
  
Summary: Buffy reflects on her life, and that of her friends.  
  
Bashing alert: This is a very dark story that contains a bit of Buffy as well as Spike and B/S bashing. If you don't like those things then don't read the story.  
  
Spoilers: Up to 'Wrecked."  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Feedback: I would appreciate it.  
  
Dedicated to the new list, anti_buffyspike.  
  
***********  
  
  
  
  
They're doing it again.  
  
I try not to listen, but its kinda hard what with the noise they are making. They always do this, when they think no one is looking. They can't even concentrate for five minutes it seems. I bet if Giles were here he who tell them to stop it, and they would listen too.  
  
I bury my face further into the book I'm holding and try to concentrate on what I'm reading.  
  
Let's see, 'the demon Arkana was banished to the underworld by a brave knight who used three mystic rings to bind him'- Ah damn it!  
  
I just can't concentrate with all that noise.  
  
I look over at Willow to see her reaction. She's sitting next to Tara at the other end of the table. Come to think of it, they are all at the other end of the table.  
  
Away from me.  
  
She and Tara have been back together ever since Willow admitted that she needed to stop going overboard with her magic. It wasn't easy, but she managed to kick the addiction. She still uses spell once in a while, but only when its necessary. I wish I had been there for her during those hard times, but I wasn't. I was with him.  
  
"Willow" I call over to her. She looks up to see who called her, her eyes settle on me and she looks away again quickly. I feel a stab of pain at her actions and lower my head sadly,  
  
my inner voice chides me.  
  
No, no I didn't.  
  
Its been like this for awhile now, ever since… Ever since then they won't talk to me, they won't even come around me. It hurts, it really does, but I know that I brought this on myself.  
  
I messed up in a really big way. I seem to always be doing that, but this time was the worst it had ever been. This time I had gone too far. I pushed them away, and I embraced… him.  
  
Him… even now, after all that we have done, I still hate him, now more then ever. It was never about love, it was about trying to feel again. And it worked, sorta. In those brief seconds of bliss I can actually feel again, and I feel good, happy to be alive. Then the feeling passes and I am left with a sense of loss. I find myself longing to simply feel it again, so I do it again, and again.  
  
Never once in my life did I think I would become an addict, much less a sex addict.  
  
That's how it happened really, how they found out. I just had to feel it one more time, just one more time and the pain would go away for good. That was what I kept telling myself, that was always what I kept telling myself…  
  
Xander was the one who found me. Even now I can clearly see in my minds eye, the look on his face, and even now it rips at my soul the pain I caused him.  
  
People say that he feels like that because he is jealous. I know that's not true, even if it was, he has every right to be. After all, I was more willing to accept an enemy into bed, a soulless killer, then I was to accept him. After all he had done for me, all the times he had risked his life, and this was how I repaid him. If anyone has a right to be jealous about this, its him.  
  
That's not why he's like this though. Its actually a combination of things. I know he still loves me, or loved me, before he found us. I could see it in his eyes every time he looked at me. I'm not quite as heartless as people think you know. It used to eat me up inside sometimes just to think about him.  
  
Even now I can't think of a good reason why I never tried anything with him. People would say that I cherished our friendship too much or that I simply never felt that way about him. Neither of those are true. We have, or had a connection that went to much deeper then mere friendship, a connection of the souls. We're kindred spirits really, both searching for love and acceptance. The only difference is that I found mine and have simply been too ignorant to realize it. He was still looking for his.   
  
Its also not that I've never been attracted to him, because I have, too many times to mention. It just seems that every time I started to have those feelings my mind told me that it was wrong, and I always listened it. It got to the point where I stopped questioning, why.  
  
I've hurt him so many times, and this was the worst of all. It was also the last time that he let me hurt him.  
  
When he found us there, he simply stared at me, and looked back, still being held by him…by Spike.  
  
Yep, it was Spike, and it still is. I already said that I don't love him, and I never have. That happens to be the one thing I'm sure about. I don't even care for him, yet I can finally admit that I am attracted to him, or at least I was. The slayer side of me was so drawn to the darkness and he represented that. I knew he loved me and I didn't care. He had loved Druscilla until he grew tired of her, then he offered to kill her for me.  
  
What a romantic huh.  
  
After Xander… after he found us, he stopped coming around me, and he wouldn't talk to me. None of them would.  
  
I half expected him to just charge up to the bed and yank me off Spike and start pummeling him, but he didn't. He was far too crushed for that.  
  
After all, he had just lost his hero.  
  
People don't seem to understand how painful that is and how strongly it can effect someone. Your hero is the person you look up to, the one you try your hardest to be like. Your hero is the person who, when something bad happens, you always try to ask yourself what they would do.  
  
You judge good and evil, right and wrong, by how your hero feels.  
  
Xander learned the cold, hard truth. I was no hero. I had allowed a heartless monster who had slaughtered hundreds to go on existing, hell I had SEX with the bastard!   
  
Hero's didn't do what I had done.  
  
He just looked at me, tears brimming his eyes, and shook his head, then walked out.  
  
He hasn't spoken to me since that day.  
  
I tried to get him to talk, but he refused. I decided to just give it time, that he would never stop loving me and that he would eventually come around.  
  
Not long after that was when SHE showed up.  
  
It was during a particularly nasty battle, we were getting hit pretty hard by the opposition. Xander was down with a really nasty wound that he had received in protecting me. Yeah, he did that, even then, even with how much he hated me. Anya had fallen too, but I could tell from the unnatural way that her neck was bent that she wasn't going to be getting up again.  
  
Willow was trying a rather powerful spell to send the monster back to its own dimension, then something happened. There was a sound like the air itself was tearing, then a flash of light. The next thing I knew, the demon was gone and I was staring back at HER.  
  
There she was, an exact duplicate of me, right down to the eyes. The only noticeable differences were in her clothes, which were much ruddier then mine, the way she worse her hair, short and golden blonde, like mine had once been, and the scar that graced her upper lip.  
  
She looked both scared and relieved, almost like she had been pulled from someplace she hadn't wanted to be. After some difficulty, on both out parts, we managed to convince each other that we were on the good side. We all went back to the shop, except for Xander who was rushed to the hospital. She told us her story, some of it at least, and that was it. She's been here ever since.  
  
She didn't quite fit in at first, she was rude, bitter and very mean, but Xander helped her with that. He was released from the hospital a few weeks after she arrived and they began to hit it off right away.  
  
Its strange, while she can be so savage when fighting demons, she can be so tender towards him that its amazing.  
  
In case you haven't figured it out yet they are together, and have been for awhile. She loves him, I can tell she does, and he loves her.  
  
I bring myself to look over there and see them cuddling and exchanging little kisses, and I find myself smiling. I'm happy for Xander, I really am. He needed this. A Buffy who could be his, without the shadow of Angel falling upon them. He finally got Buffy, just not this one.Still, I can tell that he loves her in a wayb that he never loved me. The love of the requited.  
  
The rest of the gang like her too, more then they do me. You se, this Buffy had it hard enough that when she saw the opportunity to have such good friends, she jumped on it, unlike me. She actually appreciates them as they do her. It wasn't too long after she showed up that they stopped trying to reach me altogether.   
  
Why should they really? They have a Buffy who actually acts like she wants to be their friends, one who doesn't push them away.  
  
That's what happened really. I was so upset that they had brought me back that I pushed them farther and farther away until, in the end, I had completely pushed them away. They found someone who wouldn't hurt them and they forgot about me.  
  
Like I said, its not like I could blame them. I mean, I was still with Spike for Pete's sake.  
  
That's right, I was still screwing Spike. I never stopped, even when they found out. I pleaded with them to understand that this was what I needed and to give me time. Its not like they were mean to me. They never condemned my actions. They just told me that what I was doing was wrong, When I ignored them, they stopped doing even that.  
  
They never tried to force me to do what they thought I should with my life, they simply made it known that I could not be a part of their life if this was what I and chosen.  
  
At first that never really sank in. I always felt that we were the Scooby gang and we always would be.  
  
I learned otherwise one dark and dreadful night.  
  
It was another tough fight, like the one where 'she' had appeared. Things weren't going so well and the demon had managed to find an opening in my defense. He charged at me, and I expected my white knight to come speeding to the rescue.  
  
It was when I felt the wind knocked from my lungs and the pain in my chest that I knew he hadn't. I hit the ground hard and went rolling. I expected to hear a fevered cry of "buffy" and I did. It just wasn't from Xander.  
  
I looked up and saw that he wasn't even watching me. A second he looked over and saw me lying there, then he turned away again.  
  
It was in that moment that I realized what I had done, what I had lost.  
  
My friends no longer cared about me, because I hadn't given them a reason to. I don't hold it against the, I can't. It was my doing after all. People don't understand that a person can only take so much before its too much and they give up. My friends has endured far more for my sake then I had any right to ask. They kept holding on when most others would quit. But they could only handle so much rejection.  
  
They had to let me go, for their sake as well as my own.  
  
There were times in the past where I thought that I might actually live to see my thirties, maybe even retire from slaying one day. Now I know that won't happen. I will die at a young age, one night in the not too distant future.   
  
I lost my support structure. Thos who once fought with me would no longer die for me.  
  
I hear a laughs coming from across the table and look over to see Willow and Xander sitting next to 'her', their heads tilted back, roaring with laughter. She must have told another one of her jokes again. She is able to make them laugh in a way that I never could. Maybe its because she does it because she likes to see them smile, and not because she's so caught up in her own pain that she just wants to get her mind on something else.  
  
I'm going to Spike again tonight.  
  
I have nowhere else to go, and the others don't care that I'm with him. That one of the ways I can tell they no longer care about me. He'll try his best to make me feel better, but he'll only succeed in making me feel worse. Its not his fault really, he sees me as a creature of darkness, while I know I should be a childe of the light.  
  
It could have been so different if I had only stopped it back then, when I had the chance. My actions early on can be excused by me being traumatized and vulnerable, but not now. Its been too long and I've had more then enough time to 'get over it.'  
  
So I will continue to go to Spike and he will continue to make me feel dead inside, until one day when something really will make me dead. Perhaps then I can find some peace. Perhaps then, my friends might forgive me.  
  
I know they never stopped caring about Buffy Summers, its just that I'm not Buffy, 'she' is. I haven't been Buffy since I came back and I doubt I ever will be again.  
  
I always knew that in the end I would be alone.  
  
I just never knew that it would be by my hand.  
  
  
THE END 


End file.
